do you want to see what's behind you?
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: In which the shade of Lord Voldemort doesn't flee to Albania but hides away with Wormtail, and Percy grows up wanting to help the monster under his bed.


Written for the Around the World Event: Pakistan - Character: Percy Weasley, Writing Club - Creepy Pasta: Candle Cove - Write about a child having hallucinations, Gobstone Club: Brown Stone - Fear: (genre) Horror, (object) Wire, (word) Frost, Triwizard Tournament - Norwegian Ridgeback: (genre) Horror - (word) paralyzed, (emotion) fear, (emotion) shocked.

 _Word count:_ 1996

* * *

 **do you want to see what's behind you?**

 _ **Godric's Hollow, Halloween 1981**_

Is it possible to hate yourself so much that you want to die? Peter hadn't thought so—he's done so many bad things already, has betrayed people he called friends and family so much already—but apparently, the universe likes to prove him wrong.

And how crazy is it, that whenever Peter thinks he's done the worst thing he could, something else comes up?

 _(He tried to tell them, tried to say, "This isn't a good idea, please." and, "Don't make me your Secret Keeper, choose Sirius, I don't deserve this." He begged them, he_ pleaded _, but James laughed and Sirius clapped him on the back as Harry gurgled out his baby noises, and James had said, "No one will ever suspect you, we'll be safe," and Peter had folded._

 _He had never wanted to tell them more than he had in that moment, but, well? How do you confess to being a traitor?_

 _James and Sirius and Lily were looking at him with such trust and pride that he couldn't bear to let them down_ — _or at least, have them know he already had_ — _and so he said nothing but "Yes"._

 _After all, he reasoned, James and Lily were good duellists_ — _maybe they'd be able to get out when the Dark Lord came for them.)_

Peter knows something's gone wrong when he sees the house go up in flames. His blood freezes in his veins, and he doesn't even know who he's most afraid for: the friends who'd hate him if they know what he'd done or the Master he's sworn allegiance to.

 _(Both. Neither)_

He stays for a long time there, paralyzed by emotions he can't quite name, watching and waiting, mind struggling to process what's happened. The flames die down and Harry gets taken away, and Sirius starts to look for him—soon, he'll know (if he doesn't already)—and Peter can't stay here, but he also can't leave. Not just yet. Not when he's still reeling to understand how it could all go so wrong.

Not when he's still in shock.

In the end, he grabs his Master's wand and runs, and a day later he blows up a street full of people to hide what he's done. He can never come home, and even if he could, he wouldn't want to—he doesn't want his mother to face what her son has done.

The shade his Master has left behind finds him two weeks after he gets the Weasleys to take him in, as a rat missing a finger.

It's barely a life, being half possessed by his soul, but it's nothing Peter doesn't deserve—and half a life is still better than none.

* * *

 _ **The Burrow, Five years later**_

There are monsters living underneath Percy's bed. No one else can see them, and his parents insist they aren't real, but Percy _knows_ they're wrong.

He _knows_ that the monsters are real, and they come out at night, whispering to him, showing him visions, until he doesn't quite know what is real and what isn't.

 _(there's a wire, hanging from the ceiling, and the body of his mother/father/siblings_ _hangs from it, slowly rotating. It sways ever so slightly too, like chimes on the breeze, but the worse is the way their eyes bulge out and blood drips down to the floor, one drop at a time in a hypnotic, maddening melody)_

 _(there are eyes, red as rubies and filled with rage, glowing in the dark and watching him_ — _always watching him)_

 _(and there's the laughter, a high-pitched cackle that fills his room until he can't hear anything else, like Percy's the butt of a joke he hasn't heard yet)_

"I'm worried about him," his mother whispers when she thinks Percy can't hear, but Percy hears everything.

"I know," his father whispers back, and Percy hears their clothes rustling as his father takes his mother into his arms, in that warm, comforting embrace that hasn't managed to chase the frost from Percy's soul in far too long. "I'm worried too."

They think he's crazy. Percy can tell. They think he's seeing things that aren't there, but they are there. They _are_ —he's just the only one who can see that.

There's a difference.

There has to be a difference.

Because otherwise… Otherwise, he can't explain Tom at all.

.

Tom is the only one who can make the monsters go away, the only one who manages to stop the nightmares.

His name isn't really _Tom_ , of course—he always looks so cross when Percy calls him that, even if he refuses to give any other name, that Percy just knows it can't be what he wants to be called—but for them? For now? It works well enough.

Tom is the only one who understands Percy—well, him and Scabbers, but a rat can't really count as a friend, now, can it?

His family thinks he's imaginary, but Percy knows he's not. Tom teaches him things, you see. Things about magic that are true, and that he could never know if he wasn't real.

"I was cursed," Tom explains when Percy asks, fury and pain burning in his voice—a voice is all he is, now. That, and vapor on the wind. "Banished from this world until what you see before you is all that was left of me. Barely a shade, hanging onto life by his fingertips. I was glorious, before," he says, and yes, Percy can believe that.

"Maybe I can help," Percy suggests, because if he saves Tom, if he brings him back, then everyone will have to see how great Percy Weasley is, and no one will be able to say he's crazy then. No one.

"Oh, but you already are," Tom croons, and Percy never sees the predatory look in his eyes.

 _(but if he had, would it have changed anything?)_

 _(maybe, maybe not)_

 _(probably not)_

.

Tom doesn't have a shape he can hang onto, and he always refuses to answer Percy's questions about what he looks like, but in Percy's mind, he's a boy Bill's age, with dark hair and darker eyes.

Handsome, too, to go with how clever he is.

Often, Percy wishes he could show himself to everyone, that he would come to take Percy away from his painfully ordinary family.

"They don't understand me," Percy tells Tom, grinding his teeth, a dark fire burning its way around his heart, its grip oh so very painful.

"Of course they don't," Tom replies, an odd kind of mirth in his voice. His misty fingers trail over Percy's arms. Like this, they look like claws, but Percy can't feel them. He can never feel anything but the wind, when Tom touches him.

Even so, Percy shivers and leans into the touch. Tom loves him, he knows—better than that, Tom trusts him and believes in him.

He knows that Percy will help him get his body back.

.

"What will you do, when you get your body back?"

"Take over the world. Cleanse it of its filth."

Percy startles, something cold digging painfully into his heart. "Really?" he asks, and he doesn't know why he's asking this—he trusts Tom, he knows him and Tom would never.

 _(would he?)_

"Of course not," Tom laughs.

"Of course not," Percy echoes dimly, and he tries to ignore how bitter his relief feels—tries to ignore the ice that still grips his soul.

* * *

 _ **Hogwarts, 1991**_

 _The Philosopher's Stone is hidden at Hogwarts_ , the voices in his dreams whisper. _Get it for me, and you'll be free._

They've gotten worse over the years, as have the visions. There are times Percy can't sleep for days, and Pepper-Up potions can only do so much, as can glamor spells. He learns to hold back his screams at the sight of blood, and now he barely flinches when he sees someone die at the corner of his eyes.

Still, if it wasn't for Tom, Percy thinks he would have given up a long time ago, would have let himself drift away one night and never wake up.

 _(Who would even miss him?)_

But he has Tom; Tom who relies on him to help him, and so Percy can't give up.

Tom looks a bit better already—stronger, his edges a bit more defined. Percy is fifteen and Tom is Merlin knows how old, but Percy has already helped.

He wishes he could tell someone—anyone, really—how helpful he can be.

"Do you think I can get the Stone?" he asks Tom.

"I think that you can do anything you want to," Tom replies, and in Percy's mind eye, he's looking at Percy like Percy is worth everything.

In his mind, Tom always looks at Percy that way.

Dumbledore's 'traps' are laughably easy to get past. They choose Halloween because everyone will be busy, and no one will notice Percy missing.

With a single letter to Charlie, who always loved magical creatures, he learned how to get past the Cerberus, and after that, the other obstacles are a breeze.

He feels chilled, stepping in front of the Mirror of Erised, looking into its depth. It's almost as though it tries to steal a part of Percy's soul, the way the images he sees shift.

There is a boy in the Mirror, and he's Percy but not—it takes him a while to get it. He's Percy as he should be, as he yearns to be: free, with no visions or voices or Tom. A Percy who never grew up seeing blood seeping into the floorboards every night.

And then there's another Percy—a Percy who looks as tired as he feels, but who holds a red stone that shimmers in the light, glowing with an inner fire Percy can almost feel. He looks sad, and afraid, and there is a hand on his shoulder, bony fingers digging into his flesh and glistening red with fresh blood.

It looks so real Percy flinches and looks around, but the only thing on his shoulder is Tom's ghost-like fingers, and those can't harm him.

"Well?" Tom asks, impatient. "Where is it?"

Percy looks back into the Mirror, at his counterpart holding the Stone.

 _Give it to me,_ he thinks, and the boy's dead blue eyes make his stomach drop, even as he feels his fingers curl around sharp, hard edges.

"Here," Percy replies, swallowing thickly. "It's here."

"Excellent," Tom replies, and Percy can hear the grin in his voice.

For once, Percy can't find it in himself to grin back.

.

Percy Weasley dies on December 31st.

"A life for a life," Tom whispers in his ear, laughing.

His laugh is the same cackle that haunted Percy's childhood, and Percy should have known, should have seen, should have realized.

How could he have missed this, when it was so glaringly obvious?

 _A life for a life_ , the bloody corpses he's seen for years echo, and Tom is still laughing.

"I've always been so very good with playing with the mind," he says, grinning, and as Percy feels his life slip away from him, Tom's features get sharper, clearer. "But you? You made it so _easy_. I suppose I should thank you, really."

 _What for_ , Percy wants to ask, but even that is beyond him now. Tom gets it anyway—maybe he plucked the question from Percy's mind.

"You made the last ten years not quite boring," he says, and this time, when he trails his fingers down Percy's cheek, Percy can feel it.

What does it say about him, that even now that he knows who Tom really is—who he always was—Percy still wants to curl into that touch, to chase after it?

Nothing good, probably—but then again, Percy's never been good. Not the way he thought he was.

Percy Weasley dies on December 31st. Lord Voldemort is reborn on the same night, and he laughs, looking at the body of the boy who thought he could save him.

Well, he supposes that in a way, he did.


End file.
